RE: 'beauty' magazines
WILL HOCHMAN (hochman@uscolo.edu)
Sat, 09 Aug 1997 13:22:40 -0600 (MDT)
I think Mr. Salinger might be amused since he gives us plenty of insight
when it comes to portraying people. His work is as much about love as
almost any (poetry excepted) writing I know and he doesn't need glossy
photos of airbrushed mastabatory poses to do his work. I can't say I'm
aware of playboy to hustler mags in the last thirty years, so I'm not
going to criticize the content, and I can also add that I'm absolute when
it comes to first ammendment rights of open publication and free speech.
What I object to is that I don't feel so called 'beauty' mags offer slices
of culture I respect. We could find better ways to use such "glossysing"
photograhy and prose to inculcate younger people about love and sex, but
for some reason our culture still thinks its "sexy" to objectify and
manipulate images of people and publish a mixture of advice and
falsehoods.
I watched my wife put a rasberry in her mouth this morning. We've a
little garden and have some mid-summer success with our raspberries
this year. Her red mouth was stained with the fruit's sweetness and
color, and as her lips closed on a growing season of work from composting
to watering and weeding, I knew in that one berry we forever would love
each other in our ways, together. Good living makes 'beauty' mags
irrelevant...just like they are to Mr. Salinger's fiction.
(Yes I'm aware that Mr. Salinger submitted and then witdrew a story from a
mag in the 40's that might also have been classified as a 'beauty' mag.)
will